Orphan Train stories to be told July 21

By Molly Moser

Unbelievable yet true, there was a time in America’s not-so-distant past when hundreds of thousands of orphans were loaded onto trains and sent west ‘for picking.’ An overwhelming majority of these orphans ended up in the Midwest: Amanda and Ida May Fahr were chosen in Elkport, Henry Begley in Holy Cross, William Bender and Adelaide Irvan in New Vienna, Victor Hempstead in McGregor, a dozen more in Dyersville – and that’s just a start. 

A July 21 program sponsored by the Friends of the Guttenberg Public Library Foundation will examine the orphan train, led by independent journalist, author and documentary filmmaker Colleen Krantz. Krantz directed and co-produced the award-winning documentary, West by Orphan Train, which won a regional Emmy in 2015. She will share the film and answer questions about her research.

West by Orphan Train, released in December of 2014 and broadcast on Iowa Public Television, tells the story of the children taken from a sometimes-rough existence on the east coast to an unfamiliar rural setting during an era that lasted from 1854-1929. “As some of the last of the still-living orphan train riders like to remind us, it was a different era — one that can’t be judged without understanding what lives were like then. West by Orphan Train, honored with a regional Emmy in 2015, offers that understanding,” states the film’s description. Among numerous other awards, West by Orphan Train was awarded the “Best of Iowa” award at the 2015 Julien Dubuque International Film Festival.

Krantz is also creator of the News Tutor app, which teaches critical news viewing. She wrote and co-produced another documentary, “Train to Nowhere; Inside an Immigrant Death Investigation." Her 2010 non-fiction book of the same name was the starting point for the film. Before becoming an author and filmmaker, Colleen spent a decade as a newspaper reporter, working at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Des Moines Register. When not doing her own independent work, she now produces stories for the agriculture show, Market to Market.

Krantz' first documentary, Train to Nowhere, has been called haunting and intriguing. It’s part crime story, part immigration perspective, documenting the true story of 11 Central Americans found dead inside a freight car in Denison in 2002. It’s told from the perspectives of one victim's New York brother, a long-time immigration agent, and a train conductor imprisoned for working with the smugglers who locked the railcar to throw off U.S. Border Patrol inspectors, to bring viewers beyond the superficial levels of the people involved to an understanding of the complexities of their personalities and the situation.

Interested readers can find out more about the film and the individual riders of the train at www.westbyorphantrain.com. There, Krantz has posted numerous stories written by orphans and their family members - including the story of Francis Xavier, born in New York City in 1889, who was sent by train to Farley. He joined an Irish Catholic farm family, changed his name to Francis Joseph Hill, and worked the farm. 

“At that time, being an orphan was a shameful fact, and he was bullied in school for being one. It became so severe that he asked the Hill family to let him stay home at the end of third grade. From then on, Dad was self-taught,” wrote daughter Delores Jakubek. “He married my mother, Eda Kern, in 1918. At that time the orphan shame continued with him and he asked my mother not to tell anyone, not even us, their eight children. After he died, we found out but none of us had heard of Orphan Trains. Thus our research began. How sad that we were never able to talk to Dad about his feelings and experiences through all this.”

West by Orphan Train will be held on Thursday, July 21 at 7 p.m. at the Guttenberg Municipal Building. The program is free to attend.